To assure customer satisfaction, aerospace industry organizations must produce, and continually improve, safe, reliable products that meet or exceed customer and regulatory agency requirements. The globalization of the aerospace industry, and the resulting diversity of regional/national requirements and expectations, has complicated this objective. End-product organizations face the challenge of assuring the quality of, and integrating, product purchased from suppliers throughout the world and at all levels within the supply chain. Aerospace suppliers and processors face the challenge of delivering product to multiple customers having varying quality expectations and requirements. This document standardizes, to the greatest extent possible, quality management system requirements for the aerospace industry. The establishment of common requirements, for use at all levels of the supply-chain, by organizations around the world, should result in improved quality and safety, and decreased costs, due to the elimination or reduction of organization-unique requirements and the resultant variation inherent in these multiple expectations.

Suppliers of aerospace industry products face a number of unique challenges to ensure they are delivering the highest quality materials to their customers. AS 9120 certifications were designed to provide aerospace suppliers and distributors with all they need to develop quality management practices.

The primary focus of AS9120 certifications is on ensuring product safety and reliability through traceability, chain of custody and inventory controls and proper documentation.

AS 9120 certifications and standards are essentially enhanced version of the ISO 9001 standard, which was developed to provide management systems conformity standards for a broad range of industries. Because AS9120 certifications contain all the provisions of ISO 9001 plus aerospace industry-specific standards, they can pose additional challenges when seeking registration.

EN9120 (European) standard is a duplicate of the AS9120 (US) standard, They are equivalent.